The Option Method

Uncover your beliefs, challenge them, and find freedom through the Option Method by Bruce Di Marsico.

Moving beyond stuckness, fear
& suffering

Discover the life-changing power of The Option Method, created by Bruce Di Marsico, designed to help you release limiting beliefs and embrace true happiness and inner freedom. This empowering self-inquiry tool invites you to explore your thoughts & emotions, question your limiting assumptions, and dissolve the hidden causes of your most stubborn issues. With powerful questions of child-like simplicity, the Option Method helps you move beyond the unconscious inner dynamics which have kept you back so far.

Bruce Di Marsico
(1942 - 1995)

Bruce Di Marsico created the Option Method at the end of the 1960's after experiencing a profoundly liberating insight into the true cause of his suffering. He discovered that his stressful feelings and their corresponding coping behaviours were not caused by events, but by what he believed ABOUT these events. Following this realisation, he uncovered a fundamental truth about human nature: suffering or happiness is a matter of choice.

He spent his next 25+ years coaching people and teaching the philosophy and practice of the Option Method.
Thank you Bruce for your masterpiece!

Books

Bruce Di Marsico's collected works (click on the images).

The Model of the Option Method

It's not the events in our lives that create our feelings, but the beliefs we hold about those events. Our assumptions and interpretations shape how we feel (and consecutively act), meaning that external circumstances don't control our emotions—our beliefs do. By questioning and understanding these beliefs, we can shift our emotional responses and choose how we feel, regardless of what's happening around us. This emotional choice enables us to act much more freely and confidently towards our goals and desires.

Event → Belief → Feeling

Event
↓
Belief
↓
Feeling

The 5 Questions of the Option Method

1. What do you feel bad about?

Alternatively: What's bothering you? What are you unhappy about? Where do you feel stuck?

2. What's the worst about it?

Alternatively: What about that makes you feel bad? What's the worst that could happen? What do you mean by XY?

3. Why do you feel bad about that?

Alternatively: Which reason do you have to feel bad in that situation? Why do you believe that?

4. What are you afraid would happen, if you didn't feel bad about it?

Alternatively: What would it mean about you if you weren't unhappy about this? If you didn't believe that anymore, what could happen?

5. Does it have to mean that?

Alternatively: Why do you believe that? If you don't want to be like that, why do you believe you'd become that if you didn't feel bad anymore?

Further Reading & Ressources

Check these out if want to learn more about the Option Method or want to have a dialogiue with direct students of Bruce Di Marsico. Highly recommended!